the bell rang three strokes, with a pause between each. there was a longer pause. then once more came its threefold note.

the sound struck strangely on david’s ear, and more strangely still on his heart. with the sound he became extraordinarily aware of some vital presence near at hand. something that suffused the whole atmosphere with its personality.

somehow the quiet of the morning, its meditation, its silent ecstasy, seemed to have been leading up to that moment. it seemed to him now that here was the moment for which the morning had been waiting, and he with the morning. neither did the moment pass; it remained, prolonged, expanded. time again vanished; there was no time, there was nothing but himself and that extraordinary mystical sense which was suffusing the atmosphere.

he made no attempt to explain it; he couldn’t have explained it had he tried. it was something beyond words, beyond reason, beyond feeling, even, in the ordinary sense of the term. it was not actually in his mind that he was aware of it at all, but in something far deeper. in one way it was as if the notes of that bell had struck on some deep recess of his soul, setting free some tiny spring of hidden knowledge and sweetness; and yet he knew that it was not by virtue of that knowledge and sweetness that the mystical sense suffusing the atmosphere had been translated into terms of fact. it was external to them; it was actual, real, palpitating. he knew that it would have been there had the well of his inner consciousness remained untouched. only somehow, in some extraordinary manner, it had sprung up to meet it; and the tiny freed spring had been caught into great waters, submerging him in a sweetness he could not understand.

i don’t know how long david stood by the wicket gate; but, at last, barely conscious of his surroundings, he turned from it along the grass sward.